YEREVAN. – The concept of “ordinary neighbor” is unacceptable when it comes to Azerbaijan, stated Shavarsh Kocharyan, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Armenia.
Kocharyan told the aforesaid to reporters, and in response to a query on what kind of a face neighboring Azerbaijan has after downing a Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) Air Force helicopter on a training flight.
“We are dealing with a terrorist state. Ramil Safarov is the symbol of Azerbaijan,” the Armeian deputy FM stressed.
Ramil Safarov, a then-lieutenant in the Azerbaijani military, was extradited on August 31, 2012 from Hungary, where he was serving a life sentence—and with no expression of either regret or remorse—for the premeditated axe murder of Armenian lieutenant Gurgen Margaryan, in his sleep, during a NATO Partnership for Peace program in Budapest on February 19, 2004.
The Azerbaijani armed forces violated the ceasefire and shot down an NKR Air Force helicopter on November 12. The chopper was downed during a training flight, and it crashed nearby the Karabakh-Azerbaijan Line of Contact. As a result, three pilots are believed to have been killed: the commander of the helicopter, Major Sergey Sahakyan, as well as Senior Lieutenant Sargis Nazaryan and Lieutenant Azat Sahakyan. Information was disseminated some time thereafter, however, that a member of the helicopter crew may still be alive. The adversary, on the other hand, continues to fire intensive shots toward the crash site, thus, not allowing access to the area.
